Editor: Russ Radcliffe Publisher: Scribe You can tell a lot about a country by its cartoons. In the US, Doonesbury and Boondocks are currently providing the most astute form of political critique, in three squares hitting more targets than a week's worth of New York Times analysis or a bucket full of Fox News excrement. In Australia we have very little in the way of memorable strips, the Murdoch and Fairfax papers presenting their comics as banal, Family Circus type crud that brings a smile to one's face only after partaking in a suitable hallucinogenic. Instead we have a long tradition of political cartoons, caricatures that appear alongside the editorials and which, again in a small space, convey the spit of a nation's spite at its lying politicians, its gutter-hugging celebrities and the maggots that feed them. Lamentably the press is rarely drawn, but you don't want to shit in your own bed. Anyway, I digress...
There's some great work here, alongside of material that won't stand the test of time. The overrated Leunig snivels in alongside the much-more deserving work of Geoff Pryor. The inclusion of Don Watson's self-indulgent introduction is unfortunate, as is the predominance of Fairfax/Murdoch work and white male voices, though that perhaps is a necessary fault, the regional/smaller outlets unable or unwilling to employ their own talent. Finally, though political cartoons may make us smile over our coffee or look great on our fridge, I wonder if they don't also allow us to go about our daily business with a little less anger towards the proponents of malfeasance the bigots and the bastards, and thus remove some of the necessity to act, in whatever small way, against the injustices. Whatever the case, BAPC 2003 is, quite rightly, a national snapshot, a far more accurate one than the television end-of-year specials to come. The media will show Bush and Howard smiling, and statues of Saddam being toppled, but it's here where we see a deeper kind of questioning, a challenging of the myths and above all a call to think about what we accept from our leaders and our journalists, and why.
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Title: Best Australian Political Cartoons 2003
This year's Best Australian Political Cartoons
shows a nation at war, not just with a few small
countries on the other side of the planet, but with
itself and its identity. Are we an independent nation
or the 52nd state of the USA? Are we a nation
where the fair-go is a common currency or has that
been replaced by Prime Minister Howard's relaxed
and comfortable manta, one you can preach
yourself as long as you're not poor, indigenous,
indigent, unemployed, asylum seeking, Muslim, gay,
or renting your abode?
